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By David Ansen
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The machines don't give up easy. Once a decade, they send a cyborg from the future back in time to kill John Connor. They first tried, and failed, in 1984 in "The Terminator," when Connor was just a fetus in his mother's womb--and James Cameron was not yet King of the World. They failed again in 1991 in "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" when Connor was a teenager and Arnold Schwarzenegger's cyborg was reprogrammed from villain to good guy.
Now here we are in 2003. Connor (Nick Stahl) has become a haunted fugitive, and an even deadlier manhunter is sent to destroy him, the shape-shifting T-X (Kristanna Loken). Not your usual dumb-blond robot, she emerges full born from a Rodeo Drive store window, a metallic mannequin with inflatable breasts, the sullen stride of a Swedish supermodel and murderous intentions. Meanwhile, in the opposite corner, wearing sunglasses and leather jacket, is the well-oiled Arnold, still programmed with an unaccountable Austrian accent. Let's get ready to ruuuuumble.
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"Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" was directed by Jonathan Mostow ("Breakdown," "U-571"), who knows his way around action. "T3" has neither the grungy junkyard stylishness of the first installment nor the apocalyptic pop grandeur of the second. Perhaps wisely, Mostow doesn't try to outdo Master Cameron. His sequel has a B-movie spirit--swift, punchy, tongue often in cheek. Arnold's good-guy cyborg has become even more a figure of fun than last time. (This has always been Schwarzenegger's best role--as a human, he was never quite convincing.) Casting Stahl as the reluctant hero and Claire Danes as the love interest was a smart move: life-size, supple actors, they ground the movie in something resembling real emotions.
"T3's" only big mistake is its ending, a tonal shift as jarring as Clay Aiken's suddenly belting out Wagner. Other-wise, Mostow understands that the "Terminator" movies, at their core, are about the sound and feel of metal crashing against metal--two killing machines going up against each other and laying waste to anything that gets in their way. When T-X gets behind the wheel of a 100-ton crane and reduces a glass building to rubble, the movie plays to our most deliciously infantile fantasies of destruction. At its screeching, wall-breaking best, "T3" achieves heavy-metal slapstick.
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